CHAPTER 12

The last twenty-four hours have witnessed a carnival of brutality.
From cabin to forecastle it seems to have broken out like a contagion.
I scarcely know where to begin. Wolf Larsen was really the cause
of it. The relations among the men, strained and made tense by
feuds, quarrels and grudges, were in a state of unstable equilibrium,
and evil passions flared up in flame like prairie-grass.

Thomas Mugridge is a sneak, a spy, an informer. He has been
attempting to curry favour and reinstate himself in the good graces
of the captain by carrying tales of the men forward. He it was,
I know, that carried some of Johnson’s hasty talk to Wolf Larsen.
Johnson, it seems, bought a suit of oilskins from the slop-chest and
found them to be of greatly inferior quality. Nor was he slow
in advertising the fact. The slop-chest is a sort of miniature
dry-goods store which is carried by all sealing schooners and which
is stocked with articles peculiar to the needs of the sailors.
Whatever a sailor purchases is taken from his subsequent earnings on
the sealing grounds; for, as it is with the hunters so it is with the
boat-pullers and steerers—in the place of wages they receive a
“lay,” a rate of so much per skin for every skin captured
in their particular boat.

But of Johnson’s grumbling at the slop-chest I knew nothing,
so that what I witnessed came with a shock of sudden surprise.
I had just finished sweeping the cabin, and had been inveigled by Wolf
Larsen into a discussion of Hamlet, his favourite Shakespearian character,
when Johansen descended the companion stairs followed by Johnson.
The latter’s cap came off after the custom of the sea, and he
stood respectfully in the centre of the cabin, swaying heavily and uneasily
to the roll of the schooner and facing the captain.

“Shut the doors and draw the slide,” Wolf Larsen said
to me.

As I obeyed I noticed an anxious light come into Johnson’s
eyes, but I did not dream of its cause. I did not dream of what
was to occur until it did occur, but he knew from the very first what
was coming and awaited it bravely. And in his action I found complete
refutation of all Wolf Larsen’s materialism. The sailor
Johnson was swayed by idea, by principle, and truth, and sincerity.
He was right, he knew he was right, and he was unafraid. He would
die for the right if needs be, he would be true to himself, sincere
with his soul. And in this was portrayed the victory of the spirit
over the flesh, the indomitability and moral grandeur of the soul that
knows no restriction and rises above time and space and matter with
a surety and invincibleness born of nothing else than eternity and immortality.

But to return. I noticed the anxious light in Johnson’s
eyes, but mistook it for the native shyness and embarrassment of the
man. The mate, Johansen, stood away several feet to the side of
him, and fully three yards in front of him sat Wolf Larsen on one of
the pivotal cabin chairs. An appreciable pause fell after I had
closed the doors and drawn the slide, a pause that must have lasted
fully a minute. It was broken by Wolf Larsen.

“Yonson,” he began.

“My name is Johnson, sir,” the sailor boldly corrected.

“Well, Johnson, then, damn you! Can you guess why I have
sent for you?”

“Yes, and no, sir,” was the slow reply. “My
work is done well. The mate knows that, and you know it, sir.
So there cannot be any complaint.”

“And is that all?” Wolf Larsen queried, his voice soft,
and low, and purring.

“I know you have it in for me,” Johnson continued with
his unalterable and ponderous slowness. “You do not like
me. You—you—”

“Go on,” Wolf Larsen prompted. “Don’t
be afraid of my feelings.”

“I am not afraid,” the sailor retorted, a slight angry
flush rising through his sunburn. “If I speak not fast,
it is because I have not been from the old country as long as you.
You do not like me because I am too much of a man; that is why, sir.”

“You are too much of a man for ship discipline, if that is
what you mean, and if you know what I mean,” was Wolf Larsen’s
retort.

“I know English, and I know what you mean, sir,” Johnson
answered, his flush deepening at the slur on his knowledge of the English
language.

“Johnson,” Wolf Larsen said, with an air of dismissing
all that had gone before as introductory to the main business in hand,
“I understand you’re not quite satisfied with those oilskins?”

“No, I am not. They are no good, sir.”

“And you’ve been shooting off your mouth about them.”

“I say what I think, sir,” the sailor answered courageously,
not failing at the same time in ship courtesy, which demanded that “sir”
be appended to each speech he made.

It was at this moment that I chanced to glance at Johansen.
His big fists were clenching and unclenching, and his face was positively
fiendish, so malignantly did he look at Johnson. I noticed a black
discoloration, still faintly visible, under Johansen’s eye, a
mark of the thrashing he had received a few nights before from the sailor.
For the first time I began to divine that something terrible was about
to be enacted,—what, I could not imagine.

“Do you know what happens to men who say what you’ve
said about my slop-chest and me?” Wolf Larsen was demanding.

“I know, sir,” was the answer.

“What?” Wolf Larsen demanded, sharply and imperatively.

“What you and the mate there are going to do to me, sir.”

“Look at him, Hump,” Wolf Larsen said to me, “look
at this bit of animated dust, this aggregation of matter that moves
and breathes and defies me and thoroughly believes itself to be compounded
of something good; that is impressed with certain human fictions such
as righteousness and honesty, and that will live up to them in spite
of all personal discomforts and menaces. What do you think of
him, Hump? What do you think of him?”

“I think that he is a better man than you are,” I answered,
impelled, somehow, with a desire to draw upon myself a portion of the
wrath I felt was about to break upon his head. “His human
fictions, as you choose to call them, make for nobility and manhood.
You have no fictions, no dreams, no ideals. You are a pauper.”

He nodded his head with a savage pleasantness. “Quite
true, Hump, quite true. I have no fictions that make for nobility
and manhood. A living dog is better than a dead lion, say I with
the Preacher. My only doctrine is the doctrine of expediency,
and it makes for surviving. This bit of the ferment we call ‘Johnson,’
when he is no longer a bit of the ferment, only dust and ashes, will
have no more nobility than any dust and ashes, while I shall still be
alive and roaring.”

“Do you know what I am going to do?” he questioned.

I shook my head.

“Well, I am going to exercise my prerogative of roaring and
show you how fares nobility. Watch me.”

Three yards away from Johnson he was, and sitting down. Nine
feet! And yet he left the chair in full leap, without first gaining
a standing position. He left the chair, just as he sat in it,
squarely, springing from the sitting posture like a wild animal, a tiger,
and like a tiger covered the intervening space. It was an avalanche
of fury that Johnson strove vainly to fend off. He threw one arm
down to protect the stomach, the other arm up to protect the head; but
Wolf Larsen’s fist drove midway between, on the chest, with a
crushing, resounding impact. Johnson’s breath, suddenly
expelled, shot from his mouth and as suddenly checked, with the forced,
audible expiration of a man wielding an axe. He almost fell backward,
and swayed from side to side in an effort to recover his balance.

I cannot give the further particulars of the horrible scene that
followed. It was too revolting. It turns me sick even now
when I think of it. Johnson fought bravely enough, but he was
no match for Wolf Larsen, much less for Wolf Larsen and the mate.
It was frightful. I had not imagined a human being could endure
so much and still live and struggle on. And struggle on Johnson
did. Of course there was no hope for him, not the slightest, and
he knew it as well as I, but by the manhood that was in him he could
not cease from fighting for that manhood.

It was too much for me to witness. I felt that I should lose
my mind, and I ran up the companion stairs to open the doors and escape
on deck. But Wolf Larsen, leaving his victim for the moment, and
with one of his tremendous springs, gained my side and flung me into
the far corner of the cabin.

“The phenomena of life, Hump,” he girded at me.
“Stay and watch it. You may gather data on the immortality
of the soul. Besides, you know, we can’t hurt Johnson’s
soul. It’s only the fleeting form we may demolish.”

It seemed centuries—possibly it was no more than ten minutes
that the beating continued. Wolf Larsen and Johansen were all
about the poor fellow. They struck him with their fists, kicked
him with their heavy shoes, knocked him down, and dragged him to his
feet to knock him down again. His eyes were blinded so that he
could not set, and the blood running from ears and nose and mouth turned
the cabin into a shambles. And when he could no longer rise they
still continued to beat and kick him where he lay.

“Easy, Johansen; easy as she goes,” Wolf Larsen finally
said.

But the beast in the mate was up and rampant, and Wolf Larsen was
compelled to brush him away with a back-handed sweep of the arm, gentle
enough, apparently, but which hurled Johansen back like a cork, driving
his head against the wall with a crash. He fell to the floor,
half stunned for the moment, breathing heavily and blinking his eyes
in a stupid sort of way.

“Jerk open the doors,—Hump,” I was commanded.

I obeyed, and the two brutes picked up the senseless man like a sack
of rubbish and hove him clear up the companion stairs, through the narrow
doorway, and out on deck. The blood from his nose gushed in a
scarlet stream over the feet of the helmsman, who was none other than
Louis, his boat-mate. But Louis took and gave a spoke and gazed
imperturbably into the binnacle.

Not so was the conduct of George Leach, the erstwhile cabin-boy.
Fore and aft there was nothing that could have surprised us more than
his consequent behaviour. He it was that came up on the poop without
orders and dragged Johnson forward, where he set about dressing his
wounds as well as he could and making him comfortable. Johnson,
as Johnson, was unrecognizable; and not only that, for his features,
as human features at all, were unrecognizable, so discoloured and swollen
had they become in the few minutes which had elapsed between the beginning
of the beating and the dragging forward of the body.

But of Leach’s behaviour— By the time I had finished
cleansing the cabin he had taken care of Johnson. I had come up
on deck for a breath of fresh air and to try to get some repose for
my overwrought nerves. Wolf Larsen was smoking a cigar and examining
the patent log which the Ghost usually towed astern, but which
had been hauled in for some purpose. Suddenly Leach’s voice
came to my ears. It was tense and hoarse with an overmastering
rage. I turned and saw him standing just beneath the break of
the poop on the port side of the galley. His face was convulsed
and white, his eyes were flashing, his clenched fists raised overhead.

“May God damn your soul to hell, Wolf Larsen, only hell’s
too good for you, you coward, you murderer, you pig!” was his
opening salutation.

I was thunderstruck. I looked for his instant annihilation.
But it was not Wolf Larsen’s whim to annihilate him. He
sauntered slowly forward to the break of the poop, and, leaning his
elbow on the corner of the cabin, gazed down thoughtfully and curiously
at the excited boy.

And the boy indicted Wolf Larsen as he had never been indicted before.
The sailors assembled in a fearful group just outside the forecastle
scuttle and watched and listened. The hunters piled pell-mell
out of the steerage, but as Leach’s tirade continued I saw that
there was no levity in their faces. Even they were frightened,
not at the boy’s terrible words, but at his terrible audacity.
It did not seem possible that any living creature could thus beard Wolf
Larsen in his teeth. I know for myself that I was shocked into
admiration of the boy, and I saw in him the splendid invincibleness
of immortality rising above the flesh and the fears of the flesh, as
in the prophets of old, to condemn unrighteousness.

And such condemnation! He haled forth Wolf Larsen’s soul
naked to the scorn of men. He rained upon it curses from God and
High Heaven, and withered it with a heat of invective that savoured
of a mediaeval excommunication of the Catholic Church. He ran
the gamut of denunciation, rising to heights of wrath that were sublime
and almost Godlike, and from sheer exhaustion sinking to the vilest
and most indecent abuse.

His rage was a madness. His lips were flecked with a soapy
froth, and sometimes he choked and gurgled and became inarticulate.
And through it all, calm and impassive, leaning on his elbow and gazing
down, Wolf Larsen seemed lost in a great curiosity. This wild
stirring of yeasty life, this terrific revolt and defiance of matter
that moved, perplexed and interested him.

Each moment I looked, and everybody looked, for him to leap upon
the boy and destroy him. But it was not his whim. His cigar
went out, and he continued to gaze silently and curiously.

Leach had worked himself into an ecstasy of impotent rage.

“Pig! Pig! Pig!” he was reiterating at the
top of his lungs. “Why don’t you come down and kill
me, you murderer? You can do it! I ain’t afraid!
There’s no one to stop you! Damn sight better dead and outa
your reach than alive and in your clutches! Come on, you coward!
Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!”

It was at this stage that Thomas Mugridge’s erratic soul brought
him into the scene. He had been listening at the galley door,
but he now came out, ostensibly to fling some scraps over the side,
but obviously to see the killing he was certain would take place.
He smirked greasily up into the face of Wolf Larsen, who seemed not
to see him. But the Cockney was unabashed, though mad, stark mad.
He turned to Leach, saying:

“Such langwidge! Shockin’!”

Leach’s rage was no longer impotent. Here at last was
something ready to hand. And for the first time since the stabbing
the Cockney had appeared outside the galley without his knife.
The words had barely left his mouth when he was knocked down by Leach.
Three times he struggled to his feet, striving to gain the galley, and
each time was knocked down.

The hunters laughed from sheer relief. Tragedy had dwindled,
the farce had begun. The sailors now crowded boldly aft, grinning
and shuffling, to watch the pummelling of the hated Cockney. And
even I felt a great joy surge up within me. I confess that I delighted
in this beating Leach was giving to Thomas Mugridge, though it was as
terrible, almost, as the one Mugridge had caused to be given to Johnson.
But the expression of Wolf Larsen’s face never changed.
He did not change his position either, but continued to gaze down with
a great curiosity. For all his pragmatic certitude, it seemed
as if he watched the play and movement of life in the hope of discovering
something more about it, of discerning in its maddest writhings a something
which had hitherto escaped him,—the key to its mystery, as it
were, which would make all clear and plain.

But the beating! It was quite similar to the one I had witnessed
in the cabin. The Cockney strove in vain to protect himself from
the infuriated boy. And in vain he strove to gain the shelter
of the cabin. He rolled toward it, grovelled toward it, fell toward
it when he was knocked down. But blow followed blow with bewildering
rapidity. He was knocked about like a shuttlecock, until, finally,
like Johnson, he was beaten and kicked as he lay helpless on the deck.
And no one interfered. Leach could have killed him, but, having
evidently filled the measure of his vengeance, he drew away from his
prostrate foe, who was whimpering and wailing in a puppyish sort of
way, and walked forward.

But these two affairs were only the opening events of the day’s
programme. In the afternoon Smoke and Henderson fell foul of each
other, and a fusillade of shots came up from the steerage, followed
by a stampede of the other four hunters for the deck. A column
of thick, acrid smoke—the kind always made by black powder—was
arising through the open companion-way, and down through it leaped Wolf
Larsen. The sound of blows and scuffling came to our ears.
Both men were wounded, and he was thrashing them both for having disobeyed
his orders and crippled themselves in advance of the hunting season.
In fact, they were badly wounded, and, having thrashed them, he proceeded
to operate upon them in a rough surgical fashion and to dress their
wounds. I served as assistant while he probed and cleansed the
passages made by the bullets, and I saw the two men endure his crude
surgery without anaesthetics and with no more to uphold them than a
stiff tumbler of whisky.

Then, in the first dog-watch, trouble came to a head in the forecastle.
It took its rise out of the tittle-tattle and tale-bearing which had
been the cause of Johnson’s beating, and from the noise we heard,
and from the sight of the bruised men next day, it was patent that half
the forecastle had soundly drubbed the other half.

The second dog-watch and the day were wound up by a fight between
Johansen and the lean, Yankee-looking hunter, Latimer. It was
caused by remarks of Latimer’s concerning the noises made by the
mate in his sleep, and though Johansen was whipped, he kept the steerage
awake for the rest of the night while he blissfully slumbered and fought
the fight over and over again.

As for myself, I was oppressed with nightmare. The day had
been like some horrible dream. Brutality had followed brutality,
and flaming passions and cold-blooded cruelty had driven men to seek
one another’s lives, and to strive to hurt, and maim, and destroy.
My nerves were shocked. My mind itself was shocked. All
my days had been passed in comparative ignorance of the animality of
man. In fact, I had known life only in its intellectual phases.
Brutality I had experienced, but it was the brutality of the intellect—the
cutting sarcasm of Charley Furuseth, the cruel epigrams and occasional
harsh witticisms of the fellows at the Bibelot, and the nasty remarks
of some of the professors during my undergraduate days.

That was all. But that men should wreak their anger on others
by the bruising of the flesh and the letting of blood was something
strangely and fearfully new to me. Not for nothing had I been
called “Sissy” Van Weyden, I thought, as I tossed restlessly
on my bunk between one nightmare and another. And it seemed to
me that my innocence of the realities of life had been complete indeed.
I laughed bitterly to myself, and seemed to find in Wolf Larsen’s
forbidding philosophy a more adequate explanation of life than I found
in my own.

And I was frightened when I became conscious of the trend of my thought.
The continual brutality around me was degenerative in its effect.
It bid fair to destroy for me all that was best and brightest in life.
My reason dictated that the beating Thomas Mugridge had received was
an ill thing, and yet for the life of me I could not prevent my soul
joying in it. And even while I was oppressed by the enormity of
my sin,—for sin it was,—I chuckled with an insane delight.
I was no longer Humphrey Van Weyden. I was Hump, cabin-boy on
the schooner Ghost. Wolf Larsen was my captain, Thomas
Mugridge and the rest were my companions, and I was receiving repeated
impresses from the die which had stamped them all.